5 Twitter Tips To Help Your Business

Twitter has redefined the way we communicate with each other and millions around the world are using it to connect with people, share information and form business partnerships. If you are a business owner, Twitter can help expand your business.

There are, however, right and wrong ways of using Twitter. Businesses who are looking for quick cash would be ignored and cast aside by the community. Business reputation might even be poor within the Twitter community. In order to get the most out of Twitter, you must think about what you can do for others instead of what others can do for you.

Here are five tips when using Twitter:

1. Connect with the right people

What is the point of having 2000 or 20,000 followers when none of them care about what you have to offer? Connecting with the right target audience will help you improve your relationship with them and send qualified traffic to your website.

2. Provide Value

The more value you provide on Twitter, the more you get out of it. People follow you for a reason, so make sure you don’t disappoint.

3. Network with others

Don’t be shy to communicate with others and respond to their updates. Twitter is a networking site. It’s a many-to-many communication service. It’s not just about you! Start talking to the people who interest you and build a relationship from there.

4. Know the limits

If you are a business owner, you should know that what you say on Twitter could help or harm your business. Don’t say anything you don’t want others to hear about in a professional situation. I suggest having a set of guidelines so that anyone in charge of the business profile would know what to do and what to avoid.

5. Listen to your audience

Twitter is up 24/7. That means that you have constant access to what folks need, want and are talking about. By listening to what they have to say on Twitter, you can create new products, improve your existing ones, and find new partners.

Twitter is not for everyone. If you are not willing to spend the time and effort, you are better off not using it at all. Managing a Twitter account properly takes time, and you shouldn’t cut corners in that regard. By providing real value to your followers, you can not only build relationships but also drive thousands of qualified leads to your business for free.


via :http://bit.ly/hQGp2T

Snoop Dogg is the Doggfather of Social Media Experts

@SnoopDogg just got into my “celebrities that know the true value of Twitter” group. Not that I have a real group. I personally think not many people understand the true power of what social media can actually bring to them, unlike Alyssa Milano, Cory Booker, Aston Kutcher, etc.  Charlie Sheen is not in the group at the moment. He’s too wild for me to handle.

After watching the Twitter official birthday video, Snoop Dogg caught my attention when he talked about him following Martha Stewart and why he followed her. Recently, I read an article from the man himself, saying that Twitter has changed the relationship between artists and fans and why he encourages artists to be on it, as he believes that it is one of the biggest developments he has seen.

Lesson 1: Have a relationship with your fans/customers first

“I feel it’s the number one key in music right now. Having that relationship with fans where it’s not based on your record label, it’s based on you”, says Snoop!

This is what Twitter is about. I realized this when I started to use it in 2009. It is not about “what I ate for breakfast”. That is basically what people who have not used it before would say. People who have not use it, will always say “why would I want to read what people had for lunch?” This is not true. I’ll send them to @Alyssa_Milano’s and SnoopDogg’s twitter feed in the future.

Lesson 2: Build TRUST on twitter and people will buy from you

“That’s way more important nowadays to me because that’s what the industry is broken down into –trust”, Snoop adds.

The second most important criteria not only on twitter but also on social media, is TRUST. Trust plays an important role because people who don’t trust you won’t buy from you at all. Snoop Dogg understands this as well when he said

“If I trust you and have a relationship with you, and you are telling me you are putting a record out and it’s going to be good, I’m going to buy it because I trust you”.

Summary from the other dog (me)

Twitter or social media starts with having a relationship with your customer or with people first. It is not about going for the sale straight away or posting your tweets after you registering an account.

Start with building a relationship in order to build trust. When people have built confidence in you and have trusted you, they will buy from you. Something that Snoop understands very well and behind the reason why he is on Twitter, is the fact that Snoop’s goal wasn’t just to build attention; it was to build a relationship with his fans.

via :askaaronlee.com

10 Social media marketing on a budget questions

Social media marketing on a budget requires thinking through your business and marketing strategy first. Here’s a set of ten questions to help you lay the groundwork.

1. What are your top-level business and marketing goals? Do you want to expand your pool of prospects, increase sales, or develop loyal fans?
2. What are your organization’s internal strengths and weaknesses? What can you offer prospects and the public in terms of social media content that will set you apart from your competitors?
3. What resources, both human and financial, can you apply to handling social media marketing? Who will create your social media marketing content and who will take care of the related technology and distribution?
4. How much time do you have, given your limited resources, to dedicate to another project? Working on a budget, it’s a sure guess your employees aren’t sitting around waiting for something new to do. If social media is another item for employees to do in their “free” time, it won’t get done.
5. Who’s best capable of online social interaction? Understand that the person with the most available bandwidth may not be the person most capable of representing your company in social media forums.
6. Is any one in your organization interested in performing these tasks?Bear in mind that it may not be the person you expect or desire.
7. Are there other areas where you can save resources to use in social media marketing?
8. What type of social media oversight is required? Do you have a set of social media guidelines? Is additional support or management needed?
9. What non-promotion content can you use? On social media, you should keep your promotion ratio to other content at a one to ten ratio. Too much self-promotion and readers will leave.
10. Have you gotten permission to use customers and the public’s images and other materials? Be on the safe side and ensure that you’ve got permission to use the creative commons.

via: http://heidicohen.com

Similarities between Twitter and Blogs

Good contents build communities

Content content content! That is basically what everyone say you need in order to be successful on your blog. What about Twitter? If you want to build a community on twitter, you need great tweets too. You want to post tweets that you want people to read. Don’t just post tweets for the sake of posting. If you do so and post spam, people will just look away, and this is similar to blogging.

Title is important on twitter and blogs

Title is important! On blogs and on Twitter, it makes people click your tweets or your blog posts if you have an amazing title. It also makes people open that email notification if they have subscribed via email or rss. Jim wrote a blog post on how he increased traffic on his blog using great titles. This is why I have always put great focus on the title of my tweets. Sometimes, I use a direct title like “similarities between Twitter and blogs”, and sometimes I play it more conversational like “is there any similarities between Twitter and blogs?” Some titles work better than others. Play around with it.

Will people like what I post or tweet?

Not everyone will like what you write on your blog and not everyone will like what you tweet too. Some post connects with part of your readers on blogs and on Twitter. And in doing so, you might actually cause some tension within other groups of people. You can’t write for everyone on twitter or on your blog.

Commenting builds attention for your blog and on twitter

If you don’t have enough people commenting on your blog what do you do? You comment on other people’s blogs to get them to notice you. That is basically what you do on Twitter too. You comment on other people’s tweets and get their attention. You build and engage from there and get people to notice your tweets.

Don’t tweet or blog too much

I think we shouldn’t tweet too much and fill our time line with too many tweets, same goes with blogging, since I don’t think you should blog too much. Someone whom I recently metunsubscribed from Chris Brogan’s blog because he blogged too much, although I don’t have any problems with @ChrisBrogan.  Don’t over tweet. One person who I think tweet too much or automate too much is Chris Voss on Twitter. (Sorry man, just stating it out)

via: bestbloggingtipsonline.com

The Panda Effect Is Affecting Your Ecommerce – What To Do?

Have you been watching Google alterations lately? In case you were engaged into your projects, the Google algorithm has been changed with respect to Google panda.

What is Google panda?
The websites created the keyword focused articles posted in huge volumes on the internet have been penalized for such activity. The ranking has been altered due to this. This modification is known as Panda update. The hardest hit section includes the webmasters working with shallow content or loading the internet with keywords in form of multiple articles. Some genuine websites have also been trapped in the content farm web.

Panda update and you?
The low quality websites have been targeted that have copied content or are not useful. The websites working hard to keep their content clean may get better ranking for their high quality task. Google is trying to clean up its algorithm so there is an enhanced experience for its users.

• Linking will never remain simple: SEO and link building experts have to scrape out possible duplicate content on your website.
• Do not put all your bets on the same engine for ranks: You have to focus on improving your website on an overall basis. Just depending on the Google ranking may have given you a negative impact.
• Google Adsense awareness: The text and links involving advertising gimmicks need to be evaluated before you begin to exploit them for generating revenues.
• Getting quality links will not be the same: Using the article based websites to get organic links for your website will need some pondering now.
• Stay away from spam and try to keep your website as clear as possible to ensure thepanda effect is not changing your hard earned rankings.

All poorly managed pages having repetitive articles and irrelevant content has to be removed, because it will have a long term impact on your overall ranking. You need site management to tackle panda effect. Your years of hard work can be compromised if you miss out on simple ways to take your genuine website out of these ranking lows.

What can I do to save my work?
How to react to this massive change in the algorithm would be your biggest problem. SEO, link building and everything web related maybe affected. You can choose the social media as your approach to mend things on time so your trade is not suffering on a large scale. You can get your product descriptions and market image in balanced mode. Google can be really taxing in their algorithms. You can reverse the effect of Google panda on your website with a strategy to improve content quality on the website.

Slow and steady effort to get quality content on your pages that is relevant will ensure you are not tagged under content farm.

via:blackidsolutions.com